


so very wondrous

by ivelostmyspectacles



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Kingdom Hearts III Speculation, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 09:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivelostmyspectacles/pseuds/ivelostmyspectacles
Summary: Roxas’s name spills free with the sob, and Lea’s hanging onto him, hands against his jaw and neck and clutching at fistfuls of the old Organization coat until he’s resting his forehead on Roxas’s chest to hide his tears.





	so very wondrous

_“We are all broken; that’s how the light gets in.”_

 

“It’s you. Roxas.” He reaches out, and he’s shaking, but his hands land solid on either side of his best friend’s face, and he’s _there._ He’s _alive._ He’s free of the darkness, his same old Roxas from days that seemed so long past now. “It’s you.”

“What…” He looks confused, so confused, which is _fair,_ but he’s alive. He’s there. Lea can’t think of anything else. “Wait… Axel?” Roxas looks at him, and then away, eyes roaming over his shoulder and into the battle and broken down landscape behind them. “What am I…”

He’s actually _there,_ _his_ Roxas, the one he had grown so impossibly close to during their time in the Organization. The one he had mentored and helped to grow and learn and grown to learn to love, in whatever way, he doesn’t know, it’s still new to him, okay, and there’s so much _more_ to this moment that he can’t _think_ anything asides _Roxas is here._

Solid beneath his hands. Lea wishes he wasn’t wearing his gloves. He wants to feel. The warmth of his skin. His breath on his hands. The beating of his heart. He wants to feel it _all._ He doesn’t realize how dangerously close to doing just that until his vision blurs; he realizes that it’s _tears_ a split second before they fall.

The sensation is foreign, and altogether new again, and so is the noise that tumbles from between his lips as the emotion crashes over him and sweeps him into the undertow. Roxas’s name spills free with the sob, and Lea’s hanging onto him, hands against his jaw and neck and clutching at fistfuls of the old Organization coat until he’s resting his forehead on Roxas’s chest to hide his tears.

Even then, it’s too much. He slumps until he’s on his knees, relinquishing hold on the person, _his_ person, the one he’d risked it all for, the one he’d dropped everything for, the very person that meant the most to him in this life and the last. _Roxas. Roxas._

He can’t say the words aloud. He can’t say anything. Lea doubles over, and puts his face in his hands, and thinks that _feeling_ is so _strange,_ so very fucking _strange,_ like the fact that Roxas is here, finally, and just as beautiful, and just as wondrous.

“Axel!”

It’s a blessing, to hear Roxas saying his name, especially like that. With _concern._ The same old emotion he’d always seemed to have, despite being a Nobody. Another amazing thing, when he had started to expect to never hear it again in the first place. Lea’s breath catches, and then bursts forth with a new wave of tears that crashes from him, another sob so deep that it hurts his chest and shakes his shoulders.

“Axel, _hey!”_

It’s ridiculous, really. All of his plans and all of the ways he’d imagined the outcome of this battle, he hadn’t thought he’d be doing _this._ He has to get it together. There’s still a war going on. He can’t afford to break now, but hell, if he hasn’t been broken for a long, long time.

Maybe he has a chance not to be, now. Actually being whole, and all that. Maybe, finally, things can settle. He’s got to get off his knees, though. Get himself back to his feet. He’s got Roxas, but they’re not safe. None of them are.

“Axel? What’s going on??”

He has to move his face from his hands, at any rate. It’s… kinda that he doesn’t want Roxas to see him like this, but then, _this_ was what they had all been fighting for, right from the start. And Roxas is _here._ Lea can’t _not_ look. He can’t turn away. He won’t. Not anymore.

He raises his head, and Roxas’s voice is still confused, but still frantic, and the blond is knelt in front of him. A hand half extended as he says his name again. An old name, now, but in this moment, so very blissfully welcomed. “Axel?”

So welcome. So wonderful. He’d forgotten how this stuff _felt._

Lea smiles, then, can’t help but beam through the tears even though they’re still readily falling. It’s fine. He’s fine. He’s never been _better._

Roxas’s forehead crinkles, the way it always had when he hadn’t understood whatever conversation or question or demand. Then he reaches further, and his fingers brush against Lea’s cheeks. Where the marks of being heartless had remained, now replaced with true emotion, there for all to see, and Roxas’s hand retracts with the tears glistening at his fingertips.

“Wait…” He looks between his fingers and Lea, eyebrows furrowed in concentration. Confusion, and other things Lea can’t quite place yet. “What is this?” Roxas asks, and his eyes dart back to Lea’s tear-stained face again. “Axel?”

_It’s a lot,_ he wants to croak, because it’s true. It is. But he doesn’t. It’s not a straight answer. He’s not sure the one he gives is much better, though. “Emotion,” he says weakly, and Roxas’s frown deepens.

“Emotion?”

Lea nods. “Yeah.”

It’s a lot to process. “But I thought… we couldn’t…”

“We can,” he interrupts, and licks his lips. They taste like salt, from the tears. The way ice cream’s tasted all this time now. “Now we can.”

“Now we can…?”

“It’s…” _a lot._ “Complicated,” he admits. “I still don’t understand a lot of it myself, even, but… we can. We are.” He’s _staring_ again. And can’t help it. He doesn’t ever want to look away. “… I missed you,” he says softly, and Roxas makes a face that looks like _he_ wants to cry, just then, too.

“You missed me?” he repeats.

He wonders if it’s because he remembers their last conversation. The day Roxas had left. Lea knows he does. He’s never been able to forget. “Since the day you left, buddy,” he says.

And maybe Roxas remembers that, too, maybe he knows that Lea had come after him, that he had left the Organization for him, that he had become a Keyblade wielder for him. Maybe, through Sora, he knows. It’s something he wants to ask, but they don’t have the time now. It’s a conversation for later, when the battle ends and Lea has time to breathe.

For now, his chest is still aching, and it propels him up to get an arm around Roxas. To pull him in, bury his face against his coat and _hold him,_ only for a second. Until they have that time later. To comfort him. To comfort _himself._ Lea doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.

“Err–” Roxas is probably half curled over him by necessity now, but Lea lingers, even as the blond hesitates and then _still_ hesitates, and then it strikes Lea Roxas probably doesn’t know what a hug even _is._ But then hands settle at Lea’s shoulders, on his back, awkward, tentative, and Lea barks off a weak laugh as Roxas gives him probably _the_ most uncertain hug in all of history. And the best one. Definitely the best one.

“… is this how you do this?” Roxas mutters. “I don’t… know, but it feels…” He searches for a word, and Lea interrupts.

“It _feels._ That means it’s right.”

Roxas’s chin is nestled somewhere along his Lea’s ear. “… this is confusing.”

_The understatement of the century,_ Lea thinks, but scoffs instead. He makes himself pull away, only then dropping his hand into Roxas’s hair to muss up the blond spikes.

“Hey–!”

“We’ll figure it out,” Lea says, and finally pulls back in preparation to stand. “I’ll help you… and you can help me. Give a little to get a little, am I right?”

Roxas stares up at him, and then wrinkles his nose, very, very slightly. “How should I know?” he complains, and then glances around Lea’s shoulder. “I don’t even know where we _are.”_

_In the middle of the battle for our souls._ Lea doesn’t say that either. It’s harsh, now, even if it is true. And he’s wasted enough time blubbering. “I’ll explain everything I can, promise. But right now… they need us. Sora needs us.” He summons his Keyblade in one hand. Offers the other to Roxas. “But I won’t let you go off by yourself this time. Not this time. We’ll go together. Alright?”

Roxas looks at his hand for a moment, and then at the commotion behind them. He still looks lost, a little like he had in those first days in the Organization. But his gaze is far more keen now, even if still uncertain. He hesitates again… but then nods. “Yeah. That sounds good.”

Roxas takes his hand.

Lea holds on too tightly, and leads the two of them back into the fray.

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I could comic because I have this entire comic in pictures in my head _anyway_ here I am, back on my akuroku bullshit!! waves arms  
> curls onto floor in fetal position i'm not prepared for kh3 T_____T


End file.
